The Keynesian World War II
Myth examines the belief that the expenditure policies of World War II validated the
Keynesian notion mass unemployment had a simple cause, inadequate demand, and an
easy solution, expansionary fiscal policy.

Ch. 3: Mass
Production, Income, Exports, and Debt
examines the relationship between mass-production technology, the concentrations
of income, and the accumulation of debt and explains why an increase in the
concentration of income requires an increase in debt relative to income in order
to sustain mass-production technology.

Ch. 4: Going Into Debt explains the nature of financial intermediation and the way in
which we blundered our way into the Great Depression.

Ch. 6: The Federal
Reserve and Financial Regulation explains the way in which the Federal
Reserve controls the amount of currency available to the economy and why the
experiences of the 1920s and 1930s led to a rejection of the failed nineteenth
century ideology of Free-Market Capitalism in favor of a pragmatic regime of regulated-market
capitalism.

Ch. 8: Mortgages,
Derivatives, and Leverage examines the way in which income streams are
securitized, the nature of financial derivatives, and the way in which financial
derivatives increase leverage and, hence, in the absence of an exchange or clearinghouse,
increase instability in the financial system.

Ch. 9: LTCM and the
Panic of 1998 chronicles the events that occurred during the Panic of
1998 when a single hedge fund, Long-term Capital Management, posed a threat to the financial
stability of the entire world.

Ch. 10: The Crash
of 2008 chronicles the events
that occurred leading up to and during the Crash of 2008 and examines the ways
in which the policy changes that have occurred since 1970 led to this crash.

Prologuesummarizes the purpose of this
eBook which is to explain the federal budget and to dispel the many myths
propagated with regard to this budget.

Ch. 1: History of the National
Debt explains the relationship
between federal expenditures, revenues, deficits, and the national debt and
examines the history of the national debt from 1916 to the present is then
examined in detail.

How a Conservative Would Balance the
Federal Budget(2013) examines a truly remarkable article, written by a conservative economist,
Jeffery Dorfman, and
published in Forbes Magazine on
October 3, 2013. In this article, Dorfman looks at the actual numbers in the
federal budget and explains in a straightforward way exactly how he
believes the federal budget could be balanced. In so doing he has
provided a format in which is possible to cut through the propaganda and hype
and examine the actual choices with which we are faced today. The actual choices
made clear in Dorfman's article are examined in detail in this paper. (This note
is an extension of an earlier comment I made on Dorfman's article. The
original comment can be obtained by clicking on this link.)

Budget Projections, Federal Debt,
Social Security, and Medicare
(2014) shows how the CBO's budget projections provide a broad framework
within which to understand our fiscal problems, and that within this framework
we are driven to two inescapable conclusions: The first is that it is
going to be impossible to maintain Social Security and Medicare without dramatic
cuts in the benefits of these programs in the future unless we increase taxes. The second is that even if we do raise taxes it is going to be impossible to
maintain the benefits of Medicare if we don't find a way to control the rising
cost of healthcare in the private sector of the economy. The
spreadsheets that are used to make the calculations can be downloaded by
clicking on this link, and the simulation model that is used in this note is
explained in Simulating the CBO’s Budget
Projection Scenarios.

Social Security, Healthcare, and
Taxes (2014) examines the history of the Social Security System
since 1980 and the issues confronting Social Security today. It provides an in depth examination of the issues raised by
the Moment of Truthreport written by
Alan SimpsonandErskine Bowles. The recommendation
in this report are examined in detail and the way in which they affect Social Security are
explained.

On the Sophistry of
Frederick C. Thayer(2015) examines Thayer's mythological notion that
the "consistent pattern of balance the budget-reduce the national debt have a
big depression is anything other than a set of coincidences."

On
Measuring Aggregate Variables
(2010) elaborates on of some of the
more technical aspects of measuring total output and the average price level. It
also examines the relationship between changes in GDP, productivity, and
employment.

The
CDS Market and Market Efficiency(2010)
examines the rational for the CDS market and finds it wanting. This is not
a very reader friendly paper in that it deals with some rather technical
economic issues.

A Primer on Economic Crises (2008/2009)chronicles
the events that led to the 2008 financial crash as they were revealed in the
congressional hearings in the fall of 2008, explains the economic forces that
brought about this crash, and how the crisis created by this crash is
contributing to the recession that followed. Particular attention is paid to
vocabulary with links to the definitions of esoteric terms and acronyms that
appear in the news and to detailed explanations of the fundamental economic
principles that determine the course of financial crises and economic
recessions. The effectiveness of the various proposals that have been offered to
deal with this crisis, the kinds of wealth transfers implicit in each of these
proposals, and the kinds of things the government should be doing to cope with
this crisis are examined. This paper consists of a four part series the
individual parts of which are:

Part I: Origins of the Crash
explains the fundamental causes of the financial crisis that were brought out
during the Congressional hearings in the fall of 2008.

Liquidity-Preference/Loanable-Funds and The Long-Period Problem of Saving(2016)
re-examines the central issue of the liquidity-preference/loanable-funds
controversy in an attempt to provide a definitive explanation of the way in
which the rate of interest is determined and to explain why the failure to
understand understand the central issue of this controversy led mainstream
economists to recommend economic policies over the past forty years that
culminated in the Crash of 2008 and brought about the economic stagnation we are
in the midst of today.

Annotated Bibliographyprovides an alphabetical listing of books by author.
I give a very short, one or two sentence summary of each book, and the title of
each book is linked, whenever possible, to reviews by readers that are published
by Amazon.com. These reviews will give
you some idea of what others think. The author's name is generally linked to an
online biography of the author.

Bibliography lists books and videos of the congressional
hearings referred to in the papers on this website and is broken down into various categories.
Most of the videos are stored in
C-SPAN's archive and can be viewed on your computer by clicking on the
corresponding link. Links to other online videos that are relevant are also provided.